Screen Time May Be No Worse For Kids Than Eating Potatoes

Researchers at the University of Oxford have used data from over 300,000 teenagers and parents in the US and UK to show that time spent staring at computer screens, video games, and smartphones has almost no significant effect on a child's well-being.

In order to formulate their conclusions, researchers used data from three different large-scale studies: Monitoring the Future (USA), Youth Risks and Behavior Studies (USA), and the Millennium Cohort Study (UK), which collected data between 2007 and 2016.

Using a method called the Specification Curve Analysis, they were able to look at a full range of correlations within the data. While statistical significance is important, the researchers were alert to the fact that in order to provide useful results that helped policymakers, they would need to examine practical significance as well. AuthorAmy Orben noted: "Research's reliance on statistical significance can yield bizarre 'results'."

After researching a wide array of correlations between the use of digital technology and measurements of child and adolescent psychological wellbeing the researchers concluded that screen time has at most "a tiny" association with mental health issues.

The research methodology gives us some interesting insight into just how complicated it is to process large datasets and how easy it can be for researchers to cherry-pick results. While this might lead to more compelling headlines, it doesn't do much good for anyone trying to use research to improve policy or quality of life.

The study's lead researcherProfessorAndrew Przybylski of the Oxford Internet Institute noted that "Bias and selective reporting of results is endemic to social and biological research influencing the screen time debate."

Of the three datasets we analysed for this study, we found over 600 million possible ways to analyse the data. We calculated a large sample of these and found that - if you wanted - you could come up with a large range of positive or negative associations between technology and wellbeing, or no effect at all.

This new research will no doubt start two new debates, one about whether screen time is really to blame for adolescent depression, anxiety, and behavioral problems, and whether or not previous research showing correlations was really all that rigorous. Frankly, it’s about time we had that conversation about behavioral psychology and the knowledge it claims to bestow on us.

To be sure, there are statistics that show that something is going on with young people that needs our attention. Depression diagnoses are skyrocketing in kids ages 12-17 (although that may simply be because we’re more aware of the signs, more willing to talk about it, and more people than ever now have health insurance that covers mental health treatment). Teen suicide is also increasing – it went up by an alarming 70-77% between 2007 and 2017.

Of course, there are quite a few studies that show social media usage can lead to feelings of low self-worth, anxiety, loneliness, and a variety of other negative feelings. But we need to remember that this is different than screen time. And we need to be more careful about conflating the two. If we’re not, we risk blaming the technology itself when it’s really our use of it (and the companies that prey on young people to use their platforms) that matters most. There will be plenty of opportunities to point the finger at tech, but if we cry wolf now, those conversations won’t be very useful when we really need to have them.

The point is, we still don’t know if screen time is really harming our mental health. The best we can do is keep collecting data and interrogating it in the most rigorous way possible. The new Oxford study is a step in the right direction and it’s clear that the researchers are aware of the drawback of studies that either publish the easiest conclusion or the writers who don’t reach them thoroughly enough when turning them into news stories.

In their effort to do justice to a large and complex set of data and make it relevant to policymakers, they’ve shed light on the amount of work it takes to crunch these numbers and attempt to find a connection between screen time and adolescent mental health. And they conclude:

Taking the broader context of the data into account suggests that these effects are too small to warrant policy change.